UTEP Duo Leads New 3-D Printing Journal

A new academic journal aimed at promoting the latest findings in 3-D printing and related fields will launch in early June, and its top editors are from The University of Texas at El Paso.

Gaia Lupo, publisher and managing editor of Elsevier publications, will debut the premiere online edition of Additive Manufacturing during the RAPID Conference in Detroit’s Cobo Center. The conference is the industry’s largest gathering for people interested in rapid technologies, 3-D printing and 3-D scanning and the most up-to-date trends, techniques and developments in the fields.

Eric MacDonald, Ph.D., associate director of the W.M. Keck Center for 3-D Innovation, displays a sample of what can be created with a metals printer using the lab’s electron beam melting system. MacDonald and Ryan Wicker, Ph.D., the center’s director, will be the main editors of a new academic journal, Additive Manufacturing. Photo by Daniel Perez / UTEP News Service.

Lupo also will introduce UTEP’s Ryan Wicker, Ph.D., as the editor-in-chief, and Eric MacDonald, Ph.D., as the deputy editor of the new journal. Wicker holds the Mr. and Mrs. McIntosh Murchison Endowed Chair in Engineering and is professor of mechanical engineering and director and founder of the W.M. Keck Center for 3-D Innovation. MacDonald is an associate professor in electrical and computer engineering and the center’s associate director.

Wicker and MacDonald, whose days already are filled with research, classes and on- and off-campus service obligations, said they looked forward to creating a quarterly online and print journal that provides colleagues with another avenue to present their research findings. The journal will cover new technologies, processes, methods, materials, systems and applications.

“By increasing participation of researchers from around the world with their myriad disciplines, a broad range of ideas will be shared to further this transformative fabrication technology,” Wicker said.

Elsevier’s Lupo said they realized the need for a top journal with a pool of experienced reviewers after conversations with editors and researchers at key institutes and conferences. She said the company decided to announce the journal at RAPID because it draws key international researchers from industry, academia and manufacturing.

Amsterdam-based Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, and deliver better care.

Lupo praised Wicker and MacDonald as excellent scientists and enthusiastic editors who are well regarded in their industry, and called the Keck Center the premier facility of its kind in the world.

“We at Elsevier are truly honored to be working with professors Wicker and MacDonald and associated with their world-class facility at UTEP,” she said.

MacDonald said Elsevier officials initially brought the idea to the UTEP duo in fall 2013. The organization wanted to create another, more timely publication that would cover the rapidly evolving advances in 3-D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, since the industry exploded in 2008. Wicker and MacDonald were on the company’s radar because of the 14-year-old W.M. Keck Center’s successes. Since 2009, UTEP is one of the top in the nation for 3-D printing and has ranked No. 1 in the U.S. and No. 3 in the world in the number of research articles appearing in additive manufacturing peer-reviewed journals.

Educators, entrepreneurs, health care providers and those interested in state-of the art research read Elsevier’s publications.

“This is the first time going through this for me,” said MacDonald, who added the first issue will be free at www.journals.elsevier.com/additive-manufacturing. He mentioned his editorial duties included selecting articles from a pile of submissions and marshalling them through their review. Some of the journal’s main pieces originated at Penn State and Carnegie Mellon universities and the University of Nottingham in England.

“I’m fascinated by the process,” he said.

The planned journal and its editorial leadership has generated positive feedback within the industry. Ralph Resnick, president and founding director of America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, said the journal shares his organization’s mission of promoting the extensive work being done in the additive manufacturing community.

America Makes recently awarded a $2.2 million grant to the W.M. Keck Center to lead a team of university and corporate collaborators to create the next generation of 3-D printers for aerospace systems.

“Having our close partners and renowned experts in the field, Drs. Wicker and MacDonald, as principal editors of this comprehensive journal addresses this mission objective,” Resnick said. “It will assure a timely and credible publication venue for critical academic additive manufacturing research results either coming out of our sponsored projects or the community at large.”

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